The Orthodox/Canonical Definition of God

Deconstructing God (or redefining Him) is a popular thing to do in our times. Nearly everyone has some private belief about God which is wholly subjective, even if the person claims to be an adherent of a historic denomination - cf. the John Kerry article below. Yes, today, everything goes. However, to the student of Christian theology and Church History, such private religions are nothing more than "make-believe myths and private fairy tales." They do not correspond "at all" to any objective form of Christianity (the religion in question). Not today, not yesterday, nor long ago.

So, for those who hold to a private form of Christian religion, or to those students who want to know the "precise language" which is used by theologians in creedal statements for the purpose of defining God and his attributes, I have posted the following creed, called An Orthodox Definition of God. *Note that every word and line is supported by Holy Scripture and/or the writings of the great theologians. In sum, this is what biblical Christianity believes about God.

Asserting a High Theology by William J. Tsamis

--1 God is the infinite, incomparable, and incomprehensible
--2 Supreme Being and Sovereign Spirit who exists eternally as an
--3 autonomous, self-subsisting living entity, transcending the
--4 physical and metaphysical universe by His immensity, yet filling
--5 the domain of ultimate reality with the glory of His ineffable
--6 presence. In His composition He is incorporeal, altogether
--7 simple, without spatial form or dimensionality, His essential
--8 constitution being one of mind and personality. In His ontological
--9 being He is immutable, beyond qualitative change or modification,
-10 embodying infinite perfection in all His attributes; yet
-11 in His constancy, He is neither static, nor detached, but dynamically
-12 interrelated with His creation as an affective being.
-13 In His infinite potentiality He is omnipotent - capable of accomplishing
-14 any determination of His will; He is omnipresent -
-15 wholly, immediately, and existentially present everywhere;
-16 He is omniscient - comprehending all universal, particular, and
-17 middle realities, not by successive thought processes, but by
-18 intuition, through one, single, simultaneous cognitive embrace.
-19 In His character He is impeccable, inherently possessing the
-20 elemental quality of holiness, which emanates forth from His
-21 being in the form of distinct attributes which are perceptible
-22 to spiritual humanity -- love, wisdom, mercy, goodness, justice.
-23 These communicable attrubutes of God are unified in the substance
-24 of His holiness, all radiating forth from the same refracted light,
-25 all realizing their harmony and consonance inthe holiness of His being.
-26 In His self-revelation, He has revealed Himself as He is,
-27 His nature being of one essence (ousia),
-28 undivided in being; yet He exists simultaneously in three persons (hypostases)
-29 who are coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial,
-30 each one possessing the fullness of the Godhead with all its
-31 attributes -- thus, we speak of God the Father, God the Son, and
-32 God the Holy Spirit -- the Triune God. Though the divine persons
-33 are immanent in one another, coexisting eternally in perpetual
-34 impenetration and intercommunion, there is nevertheless a principle
-35 of functional subordination which manifests the distinct
-36 particularities (idiotes) of the divine persons. Accordingly,
-37 the fount of the Godhead is the Father, the unbegotten source
-38 of the divine essence, from whom the Son is eternally begotten,
-39 and from whom the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds. thus, as
-40 Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God is one -- Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer --
-41 He is the Most High and Excellent One,
-42 the Almighty and Everlasting King, the unnamable YHWH to whom all
-43 glory and honor is due -- He is God, the Mysterium Tremendum.


Biblical and Theological References
___________________________________
LINE 1
--- infinite . . . Ps 90:1-2; Isa 44:6; Rev 1:8
--- inccomparable . . . Deut 4:35; Isa 45:21; 46:5
--- incomprehensible . . . Rom 11:33; Ps 40:5; Isa 55:8-9 --

Athanasius wrote: "Man can perceive only the hem of the garment of the Triune God" (Epistle to the Monks).

Novatian wrote: "At the contemplation and utterance of His majesty all eloquence is rightly dumb, all mental effort is feeble. For God is greater than the mind itself. His greatness cannot be conceived . . . our loftiest utterances will be trivialities in comparison with Him" (On the Trinity - ca. 250).

LINE 2

--- Supreme Being . . . Acts 17:23b-28; Isa 66:1
--- Sovereign Spirit . . . John 4:24

LINE 3

--- autonomous, self-subsisting . . . Ex 3:14; Gen 1:1
--- living . . . Jer 10:10; 1 Thess 1:9
--- transcending . . . Isa 66:1; Ps 113:5-6; Acts 17:24

LINE 4

--- filling . . . Ps 139:7-12; Job 34:14-15

Aquinas wrote: "God is everywhere in every place . . . filling every place, not as bodies do by excluding some other body but by giving existence to whatever occupies that place" (Summa Theologiae I, 8.2).

LINE 6

--- incorporeal . . . John 4:24; Ex 20:4; Deut 4:15

LINE 7

--- simple . . . Ex 3:14; Augustine, City of God, VIII, 6

Aquinas wrote: "God is spirit, without bodily dimensions. God has no properties other than His nature . . . In our world perfection is made built up of many elements; but divine perfection is simple . . ." (Summa, I, 3.1, 7).

LINE 8

--- mind . . . Ps 111:110; Rom 11:33
--- personality . . . Ex 34:6; Deut 5:4

LINE 9

--- immutable . . . Ps 90:1-2; Mal 3:6; Heb 13:8

LINE 10

--- infinite perfection . . . Ps 18:30; Matt 5:48

Aquinas wrote: "God is also infinitely perfect embracing within Himself the fullness of perfection of all existence" (Summa I, 9.1).

LINE 11

--- constancy . . . Ps 33:11; 102:26-27
--- dynamically interrelated . . . Job 34:14-15; Acts 17:27-28; Matt 5:26, 30.

LINE 12

--- affective being . . . Ex 34:6-7; Matt 6:25-34; John 3:16

LINE 13

--- omnipotent . . . Gen 17:1 ('el Shaddai); Job 42:2; Rev 4:8

Aquinas wrote: "Power is the ability to execute what 'will' commands and 'mind' plans; but in God the three (power, will, and mind) are identical. God is said to be all-powerful in the sense that he can do whatever can be done . . . the only things escaping God's all-powerfulness are things involving simultaneous existence and non-existence. It would be better to say such things cannot be done than that God cannot do them" (Summa I, 25:1, 3).

LINE 14

--- omnipresent . . . Ps 139:7-10; Jer 23:23-24; Heb 4:13

LINE 16

--- omniscient . . . Prov 15:3; Isa 45:21; Heb 4:13

LINE 17

--- not by successive thought processes . . .

Augustine wrote: Neither does His attention pass from thought to thought, for His knowledge embraces everything in one single spiritual contuition" (City of God, XI, 21).

LINE 20

--- holiness . . . Lev 11:44ff.; Isa 6:3; Ps 22:3

LINE 22

--- love . . . Deut 7:6-8; 1 John 4:8; John 3:16
--- wisdom . . . Eph 1:11; Prov 3:19; Rom 11:33-34
--- mercy . . . Ex 20:6; Nub 14:18; Eph 2:4
--- goodness . . . Ex 34:5-7; Ps 107; Rom 11:22
--- justice . . . Gen 18:25; Isa 45:21; Neh 9:33

LINE 26

--- self-revelation . . . Ex 3:14; John 20:28; 14:16, 28

LINE 27

--- one essence (ousia) . . . Deut 6:4; Matt 29:19; 2 Cor 13:14

Basil the Great wrote: "He who fails to confess the community of the essence of substance faills into polytheism" (Epistle 210).

Didymus the Blind wrote, "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have the same nature . . . they alone can exist together . . . and be everywhere understood with Him who is one" (On the Trinity, II. 6, 4 -- ca. 360).

LINE 28

--- three persons (hypostases) . . . Matt 28:19; 2 Cor 13:14

Basil the Great wrote, "He who refuses to grant the distinctions of the hypostases is carried away in Judaism" (Epistle 210).

Augustine wrote: "And this whole is a Trinity because of the individuality of the Persons and, yet, a single God because of indivisible divinity . . . each Person individually is God and each is Almighty . . . there are not three Gods or three Almighties, but a single God Almighty. Such is the indivisible unity in the Three" (City of God, XI, 24).

LINE 29

--- coequal, coeternal . . . John 10:30; 14:8-0; Acts 5:3-4

Athanasian Creed states: "The whole three persons are coeternal together and coequal" (ca. 590).

LINE 35

--- functional subordination . . . John 5:26, 27; 14:26, 28

Philip Schaff wrote: "Father, Son, and Spirit all have the same divine essence, yet not in a co-ordinate way, but in an order of subordination" (History of the Christian Church, Vol. 3, p. 681).

LINE 36

--- particularites (idiotes) . . .

Philip Schaff continues: "The idiotes is a peculiarity of the hypostasis, and therefore cannot be communicated or transferred from one to another . . ." (ibid., p. 679).

LINE 37

--- the Father, the unbegotten source . . . John 1:18; 5:26

Gregory of Nazianzus wrote: "The Father is Father and unoriginate, for He is of no one" (Oration 30).

Athanasian Creed states: "The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten" (ca. 590).

LINE 38

--- the Son is eternally begotten . . . John 1:18

Athanasius wrote: "As radiance from light, and stream from fountain; so that whoso sees the Son, sees what is proper to the Father . . . wherefore neither is the Son another God, for He was not procured from without" (Oration against the Arians, 2.41).

Cyril of Jerusalem wrote: "For what the Son is now, that has He been timelessly begotten from the beginning. For God was not at first childless, and then after lapse of time became Father, but He had His Son from all eternity, not begetting Him as men beget men, but as He alone knows Who begat Him, true God before all ages. The Father being Himslef true God begat a Son like to Himself, true God" (Catechesis - ca. 348).

Nicene Creed states: ". . . begotten not made . . ."

LINE 39

--- the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds . . . John 15:26

Gregory of Nazianzus wrote: "The Holy Spirit is truly Spirit, coming forth from the Father indeed, but not after the manner of the Son, for it is not by generation but by procession" (Oration 39).

Nicene Creed states: ". . . the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father . . ."

LINE 40

--- God is one . . . Deut 6:4
--- Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer . . . Ps 33:6; Isa 44:6; Job 34:14

LINE 41

--- Most High ('el elyon) . . . Gen 14:18; 2 Sam 22:14
--- Excellent One . . . Ps 8:1; 93:5; Ex 15:7

LINE 42

--- Almighty ('el Shaddai, Pantocrator) . . . Gen 17:1; Rev 4:8

Nicene Creed states: "I believe in one God, Father Almighty (Pater Pantocrator) . . ."

Athanasian Creed states: "So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son is almighty, and the Holy Spirit almighty. And yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty."

--- Everlasting King . . . Ps 90:3; Isa 9:6
--- the unnamable YHWH . . . Ex 3:14-17

LINE 43

--- all glory and honor is due . . . Isa 45:23; Ps 145-150
--- the Mysterium Tremendum . . . Acts 17:23; Rom 1:20

A. W. Tozer, commenting on Rudolf Otto's usage of the term mysterium tremendum, wrote: "The Mysterium Tremendum can never be intellectually conceived, only sensed and felt in the depths of the human spirit. It remains as a permanent religious instinct, a feeling for that unnamed, undiscoverable Presence that 'runs quicksilverlike through creation's veins' and sometimes stuns the mind by confronting it with a supernatural, suprarational manifestation of itself. The man thus confronted is brought down and overwhelmed and can only tremble and be silent. This nonrational dread, this feeling for the uncreated Mystery in the world is the back of all religion . . . but while the pagan can only 'feel after' and unknown God, we have found the true God through His own self-revelation in the inspired Scriptures" (Knowledge of the Holy, p. 111).